this is exactly the right advice for handling cash in less than ideal situations.
I always travel with at least 3 days of emergency money plus enough to pay full airfare to "get the F**k outa dodge" if sh*t goes bad (you do not want to be stuck without an exit in somewhere like Laos or Sri Lanka or even Thailand when the bullets start flying) so that means carrying about a grand in US and local cash, some goes in a money belt some goes in shoe liners (liners glued back in with a light adhesive) , some goes in accessible hidden pockets and only enough local currency (no US$) for the day in a wallet that is kept in a zipped up front pocket. sometimes I'll have a cheap wallet with Chinese hell money currency in a back pocket for bad pickpocket areas (Paris underground, Spanish & Italian forums etc),
if you are traveling with a shoulder or satchel bag wear it across the body, not just hanging from the shoulder, with it placed against your front not facing the side or rear, and then put your backpack OVER the straps of the shoulder bag, and make it obvious, otherwise a thief will try grab the satchel and pull you down as he grabs and tries to run, and you do not want to be the one on the floor.
Where I work as a teaching technology manager the average age (excluding three 22'ish students we employ as part time helpdesk phone support) is about 40. Due to streamlining (AKA downsizing AKA hacking the guts out of IT staff) all the lower (and younger) level staff were laid off as senior (non IT) management decided that with all the automation in deployment and basic systems management they were not needed.
Now we had the exact same "issue" as the OP talks about... but this was 3 years ago with our labs - new machines running XP... it took us (well me) about 10 minutes to resolve this - from first principals of fault diagnosis to workout it was some sort of "firmware" issue, discover that the BIOS had UEFI enabled, remember an article I read some months back and 30 seconds of googling to find a site with similar information. we resolved the situation faster than you could say "Useless old codgers".
Last year we were assigned management of a lab that was still running an antique XP image with a very old version (6?) of Internet explorer. after remotely updating and patching the lab we almost immediately had some young programer (maybe 25 and only 4 years out of his ComSci degree) on the phone blasting us because all the teaching delivery software he wrote (including some new stuff he was just testing when we updated the lab) wouldn't run under later versions of IE.
it's not so much a case of old dogs not learning new tricks but you find that a lot of people (some "old" but many not much out of their ComSciDegree) not bothering to adapt to new technologies and resources.
No doubt I could have lived out my working days programming in COBOL and CICS ending up winding down to retirement in some Banking/Government legacy support consultancy roll (actually that wouldn't have been bad financially - they earn good money) But screw that, that's not why I got interested in IT in the first place.
Three valve/tube loaded guitar and bass amps means I've got a dozen or so "Dinosaurs" living in my lounge room. Not like they are relics either two of the amps are post 2000 designed and built units (Blackstars).
on both my motorcycle or my 4WD's economy, once taken over around 80KPH, ceases to deliver the sort of milage the manufacturers claim... the 4WD is rated at around 16 litres per hundred Klm for "highway driving" yet driven conservatively at the hwy limit of around 100 to 110KPH only delivers 19 to 20 litres per 100Klm, a considerable loss of "economy" over the marketing figures, my motorcycle (a 650 single) shows a smaller but still significant drop in economy once taken past 80KPH.
Also not sure where the writer lives that driving under 50MPH would result in "constantly impeding" one's "fellow drivers" but where I live the only time, on an average drive you'd get to do 80+ KPH (50 MPH) in any sort of car, would be for the split second before you ploughed in to the back of the car in front doing 60Kph or less (usually much much less, just like all the other cars in front of, and around, them).
My GPS readings for the last year show that (apart from occasional rural or off peak freeway driving) my total time spent over 80KPH was less than 2 hours of about 6000Klm worth of urban driving.
While I'm not convinced that current hybrids are viable when calculating purely personal economics just because they may (or may not) fit in with the driving requirements of one small stretch of the road doesn't mean they fail in a other markets. I could imagine the author would rather die than drive a Smart but in places like Rome and Tokyo these small kei cars and their slightly larger cousins are the most practical cars the road and yes I've bombed a 1.3liter generation 1 Nisan Cube up Hokunku Expressway 500Klm plus Kyoto to Niggata and have driven a Daiwoo Matiz much the same distance Perth to Geraldton so I know they are not perfect cars for open hwy driving but then again most, probably all, of the big full sized cars are as far from ideal urban commuters as you can get (short of a Hummer), which lets face it - what probably 90% of us spend 95% of our driving doing is slow stop start commuting.
I've spoken to a few Sea Sherpard sailors and they use off the shelf drones similar to those used by some of the game fishing and sardine boats here, though I can't remember the name/brand it was, as described by them, a pusher prop twin spar design with a wing span almost 3 meters meters across, Sea Shepard sailors spend a LOT of their port time in my home town and it's hard not run in to them no matter what your opinion of them (here it's probably at least 30% solid support for them and an overwhelming majority (probably about 70%) support them in general principal and they do reasonable fund raising here (disclosure here I both support most of their actions and have given financial donations to them)).
you have a right to pull out your rifle and shoot them?
errr maybe in your particular little (red)neck of the woods you do.... or are you just enforcing the law (with out authorisation)?
whalers are not popular in Japan... maybe around their towns.. yeh I'll admit that, these whaling fletes bring in huge amounts of political porkbarreling , but every time I've been there the overwelming majority of Japanese people I've spoken to in Tokyo and Osaka were totally unaware that Japan even engaged in whaling and most of those that did thought it was being carried out in Japanese waters.
in fact of the dozens and dozens of Japanese people I spoke to at several Fuji Rock festivals I've attended I found not one single person supported the Japanese whaling industry - not one single one.
in fact most people I spoke to, when given the very basic facts that they were hunting around a thousand whales each year under the banner of scientific research and that much of the whale meat was then being sold for human consumption, were at best apathetic and for the most part shocked and against the idea.
that and phones (the old land line ones) when it was illegal for anyone other than Telstra (oops sorry Telecom Australia (or was it even the Government Post Office back then?)) to to sell usable land line phones. Just like the CB radios they were advertised as being for "hobby purposes only" . Of course everybody did plug their DSE phones in and use their CB radios...
two things to remember though
1: this was when Dick Smith actually owned the business, the current DSE has nothing to do with him and hasn't for at least a decade.
2:back then the government regulations on both CB radios and phones were at best excessive and at worst a tax by proxy to subsidise uneconomical government monopoly and discourage competition against said monopolies.
some time earlier this year I bought a games console from DSE which when unpacked showed obvious signs of usage. Trying to register it on line a few days later I found that the particular unit had already been registered and, in fact, as it as I found out later, turned out had been originally registered just over a year before old. No joy from DSE staff about this so called "new" console nor did they inform me about the 14 day no fault return else I would have just dumped it on them and got a new one or a refund.
A few weeks later it died and the manufacturer won't touch it because it's out of its statutory 1 year warranty (as registered by the original purchaser) and even if it wasn't they wouldn't honour it as it was not purchased by me new.
Ditto, I feel naked without a camera on my (well not quite more just annoyed at my stupidity) as many of my best and/or favourite photos have been taken with what ever P&S digital or old film camera I happen to have on me at the time rather than one of my pro DSLRs or medium format film cameras.
even going to do grocery shopping theres always a digital P&S camera in my pocket and often an old 35mm like an Olympus XA or a Leica III in my jacket pocket.
having lugged one of my DSLRs and a couple of lens for 4 weeks backpacking I can tell you that there is something extreme about DSLR's and that is that their weight and bulk can very quickly become extremely annoying and inconvenient
there are limitation though that are inherent in the physics of the optic design of small sensor cameras.
a smaller sensor requires shorter focal length lenses for the same field (angle) of view but these then, when it comes to depth of field, act the same as wide angle lenses on larger cameras. changing the aperture on a wide angle lens has far less effect on DoF than on a longer focal length.
also the issues with diffusion limit the minimum aperture usually to no more than f/8 and the maximum aperture is limited by other factors (chromatic aberration distortion etc) to not much more than 2.8 (or f/2 on "large sensor" P&S)
how ever these limitations are not really deal breakers and for some types of shooting are actually benefits, group shots, landscape, architectural shots often these want very deep DoF's, and one reason a point and shoot can often be the ideal travel camera... often the end result of a tourist shot with a DSLR and someone who knows just enough to know about DoF to know he/she "has to use" a large aperture is a "lovely portrait shot" of your travel partner with some blurred out back ground that could... possibly be... the Eiffel Tower half a mile away... of maybe just some cobwebs on a blue wall half a foot behind
Oh My!!! you think 70's optics are primitive? sorry to burst any bubbles but unless you're talking zoom lenses most 70's pro lenses are pretty damn good, far from being primitive most current lenses sold today are little more than these lenses's optics with a revised coating, new mounts and autofocus added.
For primitive think more of the Leitz Elmar and similar lenses Henri Cartier-Bresson and others used. I have these lenses, good ones too, not hazed and scratched ones. And sometimes for fun I mount them on one of my leica screw mount cameras and go out shooting to remind us how far we've come in 100 years of optics, it's a real challenge to compose and shoot a good image with these keeping its low contrast, weird OoF effect and susceptibility to flare in account when shooting.
Also actually learning what can't be done and with what is of as much importance as learning what can be done and with what.
limitations also allow one to expand skills in to other areas, inabilty to isolate a subject by pulling a shallow depth of field forces you to think of the overall composition, plus I've seen too many photos where a person/object is so isolated by narrow DoF that for al intent and purpose it no longer exists with in any context. this is fine some times but the obsession with narrow DoF and Bokeh with total disregard to basic compositional skills is a pox upon Flickr etc.
having a number (3) prosumer Canon DSLR bodies (including a still working and still being used 2002 era EOS D60 and a near new 5DMK11) a whole collection of L series lenses including fast 300mm+ primes (and yes I do have a nifty 50), owning several Leicas, having 5 medium format film cameras... and a collection of about 30+ classic Japanese 35mm film cameras my personal recommendation for someone wishing to enter in to the world of photography is:
a mid level point and shoot
currently the camera I always have on me, even when I'm dragging a 5D II or a Mamiya RB67 pro SD around, is a Canon IXUS 220 HS (may be called something else in the US market). this does for 90% of all shooting opportunities it is so small that it fits in to the coin pocket of me jeans yet give good enough images to print and display, I have 11x14 inch size prints from this camera that look absolutely great.
Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus et al all make cameras of much the same ball park quality and price.
if you don't want to start at a point and shoot look at the Micro Four Third system or Sony Nex they are all good but with added lenses they can often be as bulky as, if not as heavy as, an entry level DSLR.
for entry level DSLRS entry level Canons, Nikons and Pentaxs are all good (though personally I don't have any love for the Canon 1000D), I've shot with most of them and in the right hands, they all can make good images.
but even if you go fro a NEX/M4/3/DSLR I still say that a god point and shoot is an essential part of any photographers kit.
This company (and I guess others operating the same scam) are one reason I now have an unlisted phone number. Obviously I don't fall for the crap (and apart from one rarely running XP virtual machine I only use Unix/Linux machines at home) but despite repetedly telling them I have no Windows computer the volume of calls went from beyond annoying to the point of rendering the telephone worthless as some nights and weekends I would receive between 2 to 4 calls an hour (yes an hour) from these callers.
New unlisted number, instant peace and quiet on a Sunday morning
Sadly going to my parents recently to help with gardening on a Sunday and answering multiple calls from these scammers over a four hour period confirms that they had not crawled in to hole and died just hadn't been able to call my new number. My parents are in their 90's and, while my father was one of the states earliest personal computer users and helped introduce early, pre Microsoft, PC's in to the education system, he's not even turned on any of his antique BBC Acorn/Amega/Atari/Apple II in at least a decade let alone ever owned a Windows computer.
Fly, no sir why would I need to fly back?.. the device can fly or float back all by it's own good self
And actually yes, in some cases factoring in the possibility of shipping a device back to the country of sale it is still _significantly_ cheaper than purchasing an Australian sourced unit. I could personally pay for shipping my Hong Kong purchased DSLR back to Hong Kong or Singapore _many_ _many_ times over, further more it would cost me less to ship it to Hong Kong or Singapore than to ship it to Sydney or Melborne ('cause they make you pay even for warranty or recall work and _may_ reimburse you if they say it was warranty not owner misuse)... and heck from my part of the country it will even GET to Singapore or HK faster than to Melbourne or Sydney.
Add to that the generally quality of customer service I've had from Singapore repairers and compare it to the often atrocious "F**k you, we don't give a f**k about you" attitude of a number of domestic tech workshops (both local agent/distributers or local branches of foreign company) and it's not rocket science to work out why Australians are voting with their eBay accounts to "buypass" (to coin an intentional pun) the local market. In fact for one very major brand in the global photographic market (maybe #2 or #3 in camera sales world wide) the very reason I bought the product from Singapore and have couriered it there a few times for CSL (clean/service/lube) has been to avoid the local distributer who, over the 20 years prior to me cutting them loose, had given me nothing but pain and grief.
but a large number of cars sold in Australia are made in Japan which is also a right hand drive country (or they made in Thailand or Korea and homoginised for Australia and Japan), they are still significantly more expensive than the same model exported to the US.
Commercially imported new vehicles (except for certain heavy machinery like haulpaks and harvesters) must adhere to ADR ("Australian Design Regulations) which includes that the operator must be seated to the right (strictly speaking it says the operator can't be left of the centre line) but for privately imported vehicles of any age there is no longer any need for conversion. Indeed these days anything less than a mid sized truck or large Winnebago doesn't even need a "danger left hand drive" sign stuck on its rear bumper.
a freakin nightmare. it can be easy to import an older car (classic, veteran or vintage). By "easy" I've heard it's a royal pain in the arse.
Older cars attract just a 10% tax on their purchase + shipping cost (using currency conversion of the price from the country of origin)
newer cars (less than 30 years old) get 10% tax + 10% duties on the total cost purchase + shipping + handling with tax, Now if the cost of this "new" car (all up including tax and duties) comes to over $57,009 AUD it then gets slugged with 25% "luxury" tax (unless it is a commercial vehicle (bus, truck, dozer etc) imported for commercial purposes (so a limo imported to be a working limo will get slugged but a H1 might, if you have a good accountant, get through without the luxury tax if it is used as charter or tour vehicle)
So for current models it's almost a case of forget about it unless you absolutely must have your dream car.
one recent issue I had was trying to buy a new film scanner (yes I shoot film (as well as digital), mostly in medium format but also in 35 and, very rarely, large format). The Epson V750 is not even sold in Australia and the V700 is almost 3 times the cost at a bricks and mortar computer store here than at a US bricks and mortar computer store with a web presence. A local retailer reasoned that price difference away with the "higher consumer protection laws" and the "stronger warranty" they provide, hardly an argument when, if my one from the US died, I could buy another and _STILL_ be 33% ahead of the game... and if that one died (unlikely with in the 1 year warranty of an australian purchased one ) I could buy yet another and be even.
Much the same with the Canon DSLR and Sony Nex I bought for just less than half local price from Hong Kong. In the event of failure with in its reasonable life span it would cost me less money and be faster to ship it back to Hong Kong or to Singapore for official repair, warranty or otherwise, than to have it couriered to Melbourne or Sydney were it would be sat on for a 2 weeks to a month before being even being looked at.
compared to a lot of other companies Apples prices are _almost_ "not too bad, really", just that they have the brand awareness in the broader community that makes them a visible target for actions like this.
not if I can help it, even the best amp modeling software or amp I've tried falls well short of even a average tube amp.
The only time I've found a modeling amp useful was for playing in a covers band. Which kind of sums up the whole "tubes good, modeling bad" thing in a very tight, precise and unsinkable way
Author's love of the ThinkPad's cl*tstick pointer interface almost stopped me from taking the article seriously... somebody not just uses that but expresses preference of that over a trackpad? I know there are some dreadful trackpads out there but after 15 years of supporting several hundred thinkpad users I personally know no one who actually likes the cl*tstick... I suppose it takes all type to make the IT world go round.
back on subject, I'd like to see a test done in the real world were there isn't persistent WiFi or reliable G3 or mobile broadband... even within my work environment there are significant dead spots (whole wings of some buildings where you can be 20 meters from a wifi point and have no reception) and there are whole suburbs (such as the one I live in) that are G3 deadzones.
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this is exactly the right advice for handling cash in less than ideal situations. I always travel with at least 3 days of emergency money plus enough to pay full airfare to "get the F**k outa dodge" if sh*t goes bad (you do not want to be stuck without an exit in somewhere like Laos or Sri Lanka or even Thailand when the bullets start flying) so that means carrying about a grand in US and local cash, some goes in a money belt some goes in shoe liners (liners glued back in with a light adhesive) , some goes in accessible hidden pockets and only enough local currency (no US$) for the day in a wallet that is kept in a zipped up front pocket. sometimes I'll have a cheap wallet with Chinese hell money currency in a back pocket for bad pickpocket areas (Paris underground, Spanish & Italian forums etc), if you are traveling with a shoulder or satchel bag wear it across the body, not just hanging from the shoulder, with it placed against your front not facing the side or rear, and then put your backpack OVER the straps of the shoulder bag, and make it obvious, otherwise a thief will try grab the satchel and pull you down as he grabs and tries to run, and you do not want to be the one on the floor.
Where I work as a teaching technology manager the average age (excluding three 22'ish students we employ as part time helpdesk phone support) is about 40. Due to streamlining (AKA downsizing AKA hacking the guts out of IT staff) all the lower (and younger) level staff were laid off as senior (non IT) management decided that with all the automation in deployment and basic systems management they were not needed.
Now we had the exact same "issue" as the OP talks about... but this was 3 years ago with our labs - new machines running XP... it took us (well me) about 10 minutes to resolve this - from first principals of fault diagnosis to workout it was some sort of "firmware" issue, discover that the BIOS had UEFI enabled, remember an article I read some months back and 30 seconds of googling to find a site with similar information. we resolved the situation faster than you could say "Useless old codgers".
Last year we were assigned management of a lab that was still running an antique XP image with a very old version (6?) of Internet explorer. after remotely updating and patching the lab we almost immediately had some young programer (maybe 25 and only 4 years out of his ComSci degree) on the phone blasting us because all the teaching delivery software he wrote (including some new stuff he was just testing when we updated the lab) wouldn't run under later versions of IE.
it's not so much a case of old dogs not learning new tricks but you find that a lot of people (some "old" but many not much out of their ComSciDegree) not bothering to adapt to new technologies and resources. No doubt I could have lived out my working days programming in COBOL and CICS ending up winding down to retirement in some Banking/Government legacy support consultancy roll (actually that wouldn't have been bad financially - they earn good money) But screw that, that's not why I got interested in IT in the first place.
Three valve/tube loaded guitar and bass amps means I've got a dozen or so "Dinosaurs" living in my lounge room. Not like they are relics either two of the amps are post 2000 designed and built units (Blackstars).
FTFY
na sorry I was under post dental surgery painkiller when I first posted that - spillen and gramhar kin gogh rit out the windoz undr that hsit.
on both my motorcycle or my 4WD's economy, once taken over around 80KPH, ceases to deliver the sort of milage the manufacturers claim... the 4WD is rated at around 16 litres per hundred Klm for "highway driving" yet driven conservatively at the hwy limit of around 100 to 110KPH only delivers 19 to 20 litres per 100Klm, a considerable loss of "economy" over the marketing figures, my motorcycle (a 650 single) shows a smaller but still significant drop in economy once taken past 80KPH.
Also not sure where the writer lives that driving under 50MPH would result in "constantly impeding" one's "fellow drivers" but where I live the only time, on an average drive you'd get to do 80+ KPH (50 MPH) in any sort of car, would be for the split second before you ploughed in to the back of the car in front doing 60Kph or less (usually much much less, just like all the other cars in front of, and around, them).
My GPS readings for the last year show that (apart from occasional rural or off peak freeway driving) my total time spent over 80KPH was less than 2 hours of about 6000Klm worth of urban driving.
While I'm not convinced that current hybrids are viable when calculating purely personal economics just because they may (or may not) fit in with the driving requirements of one small stretch of the road doesn't mean they fail in a other markets. I could imagine the author would rather die than drive a Smart but in places like Rome and Tokyo these small kei cars and their slightly larger cousins are the most practical cars the road and yes I've bombed a 1.3liter generation 1 Nisan Cube up Hokunku Expressway 500Klm plus Kyoto to Niggata and have driven a Daiwoo Matiz much the same distance Perth to Geraldton so I know they are not perfect cars for open hwy driving but then again most, probably all, of the big full sized cars are as far from ideal urban commuters as you can get (short of a Hummer), which lets face it - what probably 90% of us spend 95% of our driving doing is slow stop start commuting.
I've spoken to a few Sea Sherpard sailors and they use off the shelf drones similar to those used by some of the game fishing and sardine boats here, though I can't remember the name/brand it was, as described by them, a pusher prop twin spar design with a wing span almost 3 meters meters across, Sea Shepard sailors spend a LOT of their port time in my home town and it's hard not run in to them no matter what your opinion of them (here it's probably at least 30% solid support for them and an overwhelming majority (probably about 70%) support them in general principal and they do reasonable fund raising here (disclosure here I both support most of their actions and have given financial donations to them)).
you have a right to pull out your rifle and shoot them?
errr maybe in your particular little (red)neck of the woods you do.... or are you just enforcing the law (with out authorisation)?
whalers are not popular in Japan... maybe around their towns .. yeh I'll admit that, these whaling fletes bring in huge amounts of political porkbarreling , but every time I've been there the overwelming majority of Japanese people I've spoken to in Tokyo and Osaka were totally unaware that Japan even engaged in whaling and most of those that did thought it was being carried out in Japanese waters.
in fact of the dozens and dozens of Japanese people I spoke to at several Fuji Rock festivals I've attended I found not one single person supported the Japanese whaling industry - not one single one.
in fact most people I spoke to, when given the very basic facts that they were hunting around a thousand whales each year under the banner of scientific research and that much of the whale meat was then being sold for human consumption, were at best apathetic and for the most part shocked and against the idea.
that and phones (the old land line ones) when it was illegal for anyone other than Telstra (oops sorry Telecom Australia (or was it even the Government Post Office back then?)) to to sell usable land line phones. Just like the CB radios they were advertised as being for "hobby purposes only" . Of course everybody did plug their DSE phones in and use their CB radios...
two things to remember though
1: this was when Dick Smith actually owned the business, the current DSE has nothing to do with him and hasn't for at least a decade.
2:back then the government regulations on both CB radios and phones were at best excessive and at worst a tax by proxy to subsidise uneconomical government monopoly and discourage competition against said monopolies.
some time earlier this year I bought a games console from DSE which when unpacked showed obvious signs of usage. Trying to register it on line a few days later I found that the particular unit had already been registered and, in fact, as it as I found out later, turned out had been originally registered just over a year before old. No joy from DSE staff about this so called "new" console nor did they inform me about the 14 day no fault return else I would have just dumped it on them and got a new one or a refund. A few weeks later it died and the manufacturer won't touch it because it's out of its statutory 1 year warranty (as registered by the original purchaser) and even if it wasn't they wouldn't honour it as it was not purchased by me new.
Ditto, I feel naked without a camera on my (well not quite more just annoyed at my stupidity) as many of my best and/or favourite photos have been taken with what ever P&S digital or old film camera I happen to have on me at the time rather than one of my pro DSLRs or medium format film cameras.
even going to do grocery shopping theres always a digital P&S camera in my pocket and often an old 35mm like an Olympus XA or a Leica III in my jacket pocket.
eh? you're full of something... what ever it is I'm not sure, but it sure isn't knowledge about photography.
having lugged one of my DSLRs and a couple of lens for 4 weeks backpacking I can tell you that there is something extreme about DSLR's and that is that their weight and bulk can very quickly become extremely annoying and inconvenient
there are limitation though that are inherent in the physics of the optic design of small sensor cameras. a smaller sensor requires shorter focal length lenses for the same field (angle) of view but these then, when it comes to depth of field, act the same as wide angle lenses on larger cameras. changing the aperture on a wide angle lens has far less effect on DoF than on a longer focal length.
... of maybe just some cobwebs on a blue wall half a foot behind
also the issues with diffusion limit the minimum aperture usually to no more than f/8 and the maximum aperture is limited by other factors (chromatic aberration distortion etc) to not much more than 2.8 (or f/2 on "large sensor" P&S)
how ever these limitations are not really deal breakers and for some types of shooting are actually benefits, group shots, landscape, architectural shots often these want very deep DoF's, and one reason a point and shoot can often be the ideal travel camera... often the end result of a tourist shot with a DSLR and someone who knows just enough to know about DoF to know he/she "has to use" a large aperture is a "lovely portrait shot" of your travel partner with some blurred out back ground that could... possibly be... the Eiffel Tower half a mile away
Oh My!!! you think 70's optics are primitive? sorry to burst any bubbles but unless you're talking zoom lenses most 70's pro lenses are pretty damn good, far from being primitive most current lenses sold today are little more than these lenses's optics with a revised coating, new mounts and autofocus added. For primitive think more of the Leitz Elmar and similar lenses Henri Cartier-Bresson and others used. I have these lenses, good ones too, not hazed and scratched ones. And sometimes for fun I mount them on one of my leica screw mount cameras and go out shooting to remind us how far we've come in 100 years of optics, it's a real challenge to compose and shoot a good image with these keeping its low contrast, weird OoF effect and susceptibility to flare in account when shooting.
Also actually learning what can't be done and with what is of as much importance as learning what can be done and with what.
limitations also allow one to expand skills in to other areas, inabilty to isolate a subject by pulling a shallow depth of field forces you to think of the overall composition, plus I've seen too many photos where a person/object is so isolated by narrow DoF that for al intent and purpose it no longer exists with in any context. this is fine some times but the obsession with narrow DoF and Bokeh with total disregard to basic compositional skills is a pox upon Flickr etc.
having a number (3) prosumer Canon DSLR bodies (including a still working and still being used 2002 era EOS D60 and a near new 5DMK11) a whole collection of L series lenses including fast 300mm+ primes (and yes I do have a nifty 50), owning several Leicas, having 5 medium format film cameras... and a collection of about 30+ classic Japanese 35mm film cameras my personal recommendation for someone wishing to enter in to the world of photography is:
a mid level point and shoot
currently the camera I always have on me, even when I'm dragging a 5D II or a Mamiya RB67 pro SD around, is a Canon IXUS 220 HS (may be called something else in the US market). this does for 90% of all shooting opportunities it is so small that it fits in to the coin pocket of me jeans yet give good enough images to print and display, I have 11x14 inch size prints from this camera that look absolutely great. Nikon, Panasonic, Olympus et al all make cameras of much the same ball park quality and price.
if you don't want to start at a point and shoot look at the Micro Four Third system or Sony Nex they are all good but with added lenses they can often be as bulky as, if not as heavy as, an entry level DSLR.
for entry level DSLRS entry level Canons, Nikons and Pentaxs are all good (though personally I don't have any love for the Canon 1000D), I've shot with most of them and in the right hands, they all can make good images.
but even if you go fro a NEX/M4/3/DSLR I still say that a god point and shoot is an essential part of any photographers kit.
This company (and I guess others operating the same scam) are one reason I now have an unlisted phone number. Obviously I don't fall for the crap (and apart from one rarely running XP virtual machine I only use Unix/Linux machines at home) but despite repetedly telling them I have no Windows computer the volume of calls went from beyond annoying to the point of rendering the telephone worthless as some nights and weekends I would receive between 2 to 4 calls an hour (yes an hour) from these callers.
New unlisted number, instant peace and quiet on a Sunday morning
Sadly going to my parents recently to help with gardening on a Sunday and answering multiple calls from these scammers over a four hour period confirms that they had not crawled in to hole and died just hadn't been able to call my new number. My parents are in their 90's and, while my father was one of the states earliest personal computer users and helped introduce early, pre Microsoft, PC's in to the education system, he's not even turned on any of his antique BBC Acorn/Amega/Atari/Apple II in at least a decade let alone ever owned a Windows computer.
Fly, no sir why would I need to fly back?.. the device can fly or float back all by it's own good self
And actually yes, in some cases factoring in the possibility of shipping a device back to the country of sale it is still _significantly_ cheaper than purchasing an Australian sourced unit. I could personally pay for shipping my Hong Kong purchased DSLR back to Hong Kong or Singapore _many_ _many_ times over, further more it would cost me less to ship it to Hong Kong or Singapore than to ship it to Sydney or Melborne ('cause they make you pay even for warranty or recall work and _may_ reimburse you if they say it was warranty not owner misuse)... and heck from my part of the country it will even GET to Singapore or HK faster than to Melbourne or Sydney.
Add to that the generally quality of customer service I've had from Singapore repairers and compare it to the often atrocious "F**k you, we don't give a f**k about you" attitude of a number of domestic tech workshops (both local agent/distributers or local branches of foreign company) and it's not rocket science to work out why Australians are voting with their eBay accounts to "buypass" (to coin an intentional pun) the local market. In fact for one very major brand in the global photographic market (maybe #2 or #3 in camera sales world wide) the very reason I bought the product from Singapore and have couriered it there a few times for CSL (clean/service/lube) has been to avoid the local distributer who, over the 20 years prior to me cutting them loose, had given me nothing but pain and grief.
but a large number of cars sold in Australia are made in Japan which is also a right hand drive country (or they made in Thailand or Korea and homoginised for Australia and Japan), they are still significantly more expensive than the same model exported to the US.
Commercially imported new vehicles (except for certain heavy machinery like haulpaks and harvesters) must adhere to ADR ("Australian Design Regulations) which includes that the operator must be seated to the right (strictly speaking it says the operator can't be left of the centre line) but for privately imported vehicles of any age there is no longer any need for conversion. Indeed these days anything less than a mid sized truck or large Winnebago doesn't even need a "danger left hand drive" sign stuck on its rear bumper.
a freakin nightmare. it can be easy to import an older car (classic, veteran or vintage). By "easy" I've heard it's a royal pain in the arse. Older cars attract just a 10% tax on their purchase + shipping cost (using currency conversion of the price from the country of origin) newer cars (less than 30 years old) get 10% tax + 10% duties on the total cost purchase + shipping + handling with tax, Now if the cost of this "new" car (all up including tax and duties) comes to over $57,009 AUD it then gets slugged with 25% "luxury" tax (unless it is a commercial vehicle (bus, truck, dozer etc) imported for commercial purposes (so a limo imported to be a working limo will get slugged but a H1 might, if you have a good accountant, get through without the luxury tax if it is used as charter or tour vehicle)
So for current models it's almost a case of forget about it unless you absolutely must have your dream car.
one recent issue I had was trying to buy a new film scanner (yes I shoot film (as well as digital), mostly in medium format but also in 35 and, very rarely, large format). The Epson V750 is not even sold in Australia and the V700 is almost 3 times the cost at a bricks and mortar computer store here than at a US bricks and mortar computer store with a web presence. A local retailer reasoned that price difference away with the "higher consumer protection laws" and the "stronger warranty" they provide, hardly an argument when, if my one from the US died, I could buy another and _STILL_ be 33% ahead of the game... and if that one died (unlikely with in the 1 year warranty of an australian purchased one ) I could buy yet another and be even.
Much the same with the Canon DSLR and Sony Nex I bought for just less than half local price from Hong Kong. In the event of failure with in its reasonable life span it would cost me less money and be faster to ship it back to Hong Kong or to Singapore for official repair, warranty or otherwise, than to have it couriered to Melbourne or Sydney were it would be sat on for a 2 weeks to a month before being even being looked at.
compared to a lot of other companies Apples prices are _almost_ "not too bad, really", just that they have the brand awareness in the broader community that makes them a visible target for actions like this.
not if I can help it, even the best amp modeling software or amp I've tried falls well short of even a average tube amp. The only time I've found a modeling amp useful was for playing in a covers band. Which kind of sums up the whole "tubes good, modeling bad" thing in a very tight, precise and unsinkable way
sorry ... I meant "3G network"... I never do my best thinking/typing at 6 am... doubly so 6am before coffee
Author's love of the ThinkPad's cl*tstick pointer interface almost stopped me from taking the article seriously... somebody not just uses that but expresses preference of that over a trackpad? I know there are some dreadful trackpads out there but after 15 years of supporting several hundred thinkpad users I personally know no one who actually likes the cl*tstick... I suppose it takes all type to make the IT world go round.
back on subject, I'd like to see a test done in the real world were there isn't persistent WiFi or reliable G3 or mobile broadband... even within my work environment there are significant dead spots (whole wings of some buildings where you can be 20 meters from a wifi point and have no reception) and there are whole suburbs (such as the one I live in) that are G3 deadzones.